THE OLYMPIC TOWER AND STADIUM

<It is high time to introduce another important spot of Munich to you … the Olympic Park and there in particular, the Olympic Tower or as it is frequently called the TV-Tower due to it’s telecommunication-installations – and the stadium!Currently the park together with it’s slopes is flooded by soccer-fans from all over the world watching their team on the HUGE screen set up their called “Public viewing area”! The whole place converted to a BIG picnic-place with people from all age-groups frequenting from the late morning to night to celebrate their particular team! To the best of my knowledge ALL games are broadcast so you can imagine what’s going on there on a daily basis since the beginning of the soccer world championship with a few hundred thousand folks from all over being here as welcome guests!Let me tell you a few words to the tower and stadium …Both structures are naturally adjacent to each other and were especially built for the Olympic Games in 1972 at an area which was previously used as airfield for light planes. The construction of the tower took from 1965-1968. It is 290 meters (950 feet) high and has two “pods”, the lower one housing the telecommunication-installation and the upper a revolving restaurant (one full turn per hour!) with two viewing platforms offering a breathtaking panorama over the city. With “Föhn”-wind (warm, dry wind) blowing, the Alps almost seem to be within touching distance of the tower! The elevator goes up at a speed of nine meters per second … so someone with a sensitive stomach may think twice if to use it right after a full meal!

The Olympic Tent was designed by the internationally renowned architect Dieter Behnisch (born in 1922 in Dresden), one of the most prominent architects representing “deconstructivism” (characterized by ideas of fragmentation and non-linear designs) together with Otto Frei as roof-design consultant.

For Munich the scale was tremendous, it involved the erection and linking of various kind of amoeba-shaped tents! The places it wholley covers are of course the main stadium, the gym and as well the swimming area with one large and one small intermediate roof. To give you an idea of the scale … the stadium-roof alone consists of 34,550m² PVC-coated polyester fabric with translucent plexiglass-covering!

All roofs are supported by a network of twin-strands with a mesh-width of 75 cm! The roof of the stadium is held by eight cablestayed towers with a hight of up to 76 meters and tensioned by a curved cable consisting of ten parallel strand cables along the inner edge. The roof of the indoor-pool is supported by a single 80 meter high tower!I hope I didn’t bore you by giving all those details – my intention was to show you that safety-considerations were on the very top of their list and alone the fact that during the last 33 years despite the tremedous weight of HUGE amounts of wet snow – during the last winters in particular – nothing significant happened, does clearly attest to it!I have seen the tower as well as the tents already hundreds and hundreds of times during the years but they never cease to amaze me and continue to touch to my distinct sense of aesthetics, harmony and beauty!